If I had my life to live over, I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I'd have fewer imaginary ones. ~Don Herold

You're a little upset by your troubles, and that's natural enough, but don't let your mind run on them any more than you can help; drag your thoughts away from your troubles—by the ears, by the heels, or any other way, so you manage it; it's the healthiest thing a body can do; dwelling on troubles is deadly, just deadly—and that's the softest name there is for it. You must keep your mind amused—you must, indeed. ~Mark Twain, The American Claimant, 1891

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy. ~Leo Buscaglia

If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep. ~Dale Carnegie

Half the annoyances of life will disappear if one is only patient under them. Almost all the other half will go the same way if one does not worry over them. ~Frank A. De Puy, "Happiness in the Home: Be Patient," The New Century Home Book, 1900

I've developed a new philosophy... I only dread one day at a time. ~Charlie Brown (Charles Schulz)

Troubles are a lot like people — they grow bigger if you nurse them. ~Author Unknown

If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today. ~E. Joseph Cossman

Nerves and butterflies are fine — they're a physical sign that you're mentally ready and eager. You have to get the butterflies to fly in formation, that's the trick. ~Steve Bull

Nerves provide me with energy. They work for me. It's when I don't have them, when I feel at ease, that I get worried. ~Mike Nichols

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ~Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things"

People gather bundles of sticks to build bridges they never cross. ~Author Unknown

You can't wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time. ~Pat Schroeder

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. ~Elbert Hubbard, The Note Book, 1927

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them. ~George Bernard Shaw, "Family Affection," Parents and Children, 1914

Panic is a sudden desertion of us, and a going over to the enemy of our imagination. ~Christian Nevell Bovee

Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face. ~Nelson DeMille

For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe. ~Author Unknown

All of the evil passions are traceable to one of two roots. Anger is the root of all the aggressive passions. Worry is the root of all the cowardly passions.... It is not necessary to engage in battle the small army of lesser passions if you concentrate your efforts against anger and worry, for they are all children of these parents. ~Horace Fletcher, Menticulture, 1895

We experience moments absolutely free from worry. These brief respites are called panic. ~Cullen Hightower

You're gonna spin yourself like a top with the what ifs. ~Virgil Williams, Criminal Minds, "Sick Day" [S12, E2, 2016, Will to J.J.]

If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you'll die a lot of times. ~Dean Smith

It only seems as if you are doing something when you're worrying. ~Lucy Maud Montgomery

A hundredload of worry will not pay an ounce of debt. ~George Herbert

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey. ~Thomas A. Edison

Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow. ~Swedish Proverb

Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three — all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have. ~Edward Everett Hale

That the birds of worry and care fly over you head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent. ~Chinese Proverb

We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it. ~John Newton

Anger and worry are the most unprofitable conditions known to man. They are like thieves that steal precious time and energy from life. Anger is a highway robber and worry is a sneak thief. ~Horace Fletcher, Menticulture, 1895 [a little altered—tεᖇᖇ¡·g]

Worry ducks when purpose flies overhead. ~Terri Guillemets

It iz the little bits ov things that fret and worry us; we kan dodge an elefunt but we kan't a fli. ~Josh Billings

Worry, doubt, fear and despair are the enemies which slowly bring us down to the ground and turn us to dust before we die. ~Attributed to Douglas MacArthur

Worry is an addiction that interferes with compassion. ~Deng Ming-Dao

You can never worry your way to enlightenment. ~Terri Guillemets

When you suffer an attack of nerves you're being attacked by the nervous system. What chance has a man got against a system? ~Russell Hoban

Ah, but you must distinguish here between that foresight, that calm care for the future which is an evidence of sanity and which is necessary to make things go right and smoothly, and the mischievous brooding, worrying habit which anticipates not what is likely to happen, but what is most unlikely.... The first helps you on materially, the second is like the cantering up and down of a rocking-horse in the same place. There is plenty of motion but no progress. ~Mary Boardman Page, "The Confessions of a Worrier," 1899 [Sweet! Looks like I've stumbled upon if not the original then at least an earlier version of "Worrying is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere," or "Worry is like a rocking chair — it gives you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere!" —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]

[A]ny concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden. ~Corrie Ten Boom, Clippings from My Notebook

I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. "Never worry about your heart till it stops beating." ~E.B. White

There are two days in the week about which and upon which I never worry... Yesterday and Tomorrow. ~Robert Jones Burdette

A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work. ~John Lubbock

Worry trades the joy of now for the unlikely catastrophes of later. ~Tim Fargo

As a rule, what is out of sight disturbs men's minds more seriously than what they see. ~Julius Caesar

Don't shoulder the burdens of others!...
Each man has his own special troubles,
His worries and problems and woes;
Give aid when you can to each mortal,
But try not to feel all his blows!
For you, too, have burdens to carry;
And, if you just wear yourself out
In agony over all others,
How can you, your own troubles, rout?
~Gertrude Buckingham, "Good Advice"

[Worry] is a vicious and unnatural habit into which we have fallen through generations of artificial thinking. So far from stimulating and helping us to action, it cheats us and robs us of strength. What friction is to the mechanical world, worry is to the mental machinery. ~Mary Boardman Page, "The Confessions of a Worrier," 1899

If worrying were an Olympic sport, you'd get the gold for sure. ~Stephenie Geist

I refuse to be burdened by vague worries. If something wants to worry me, it will have to make itself clear. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

Heavy thoughts bring on physical maladies; when the soul is oppressed so is the body. ~Martin Luther

Anger and worry are caused by phantoms that we create within ourselves and whose only strength is that with which we endow them. ~Horace Fletcher, Menticulture, 1895

I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us. ~Dorothy Day

If any man or woman knows more about worrying than I do, that man or woman is sincerely to be pitied. To begin with, I come of honorable generations of worriers, all of whom seemed to be deeply sensible of their responsibility for the carrying on of a world which they did not create. My grandfather used to worry about the weather and crops. My mother worried with an elaboration and finish which really lent distinction to her performance. She could worry harder and longer on less provocation than anybody else I ever knew. When it became my turn to take up the burden of the universe I was quite as successful as she.
As a child, I worried about the end of the world, and the Unpardonable Sin, which I knew I had committed, if I could only find out what it was. I worried my way through school and into college, where my course in worry was so complete that I came out with nervous prostration and two deep furrows between my eyebrows which I shall wear, like the scars of battle they really are, to my dying day. And then I worried about the furrows!
I began to see the light through reading Menticulture by Horace Fletcher which put a vague old Buddhist doctrine into a modern, concrete formula — "Anger and worry are bad habits of the mind. They are not necessary ingredients." Worry not necessary! I had always supposed it was as much my business to worry as it was to breathe, and I looked upon people who did not worry as the shirks and cowards of creation, who were easy in their minds simply because they were criminally indifferent to their duties.
~Mary Boardman Page, "The Confessions of a Worrier," 1899 [a little altered —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]

Worry is a complete cycle of inefficient thought revolving about a pivot of fear. ~Author Unknown

Loneliness, insomnia, and change: the fear of these is even worse than the reality. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

If I must have an ill, may it be real,
That I may meet it eye to eye and fight,
And wheresoever it may strength reveal
Get after it with all my main and might.
The woe that but impends and wears the mind
With worry deep and most vexatious care,
Is harder fighting than the realler kind,
For when you come to strike—it isn't there!
~John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922), "Unreal Troubles" (March Fifteenth), The Cheery Way: A Bit of Verse For Every Day, 1920

It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down. ~George MacDonald

Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are! ~Charles Dickens

Stop telling men not to worry; all thinking men do; and such only are the ones who do the world's work. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)

Some patients I see are actually draining into their bodies the diseased thoughts of their minds. ~Zacharty Bercovitz

People can stop their endless clatter and whirr of that worrying machine in their brains at will, and as completely and successfully as one stops the beating of a restless pendulum by laying a steady hand upon it.... Think of what this means—the ability to live a life in which there is no such thing as fear or worry—they are at root the same thing. Think of what it means once more to wake in the morning as you did when you were a child with a dim sense of being happy about something which you cannot recall, instead of having your waking thought, as I fancy most do in mature life, "What was it I was worrying about when I went to sleep?" Can such a man help carrying success with him wherever he goes? Can such a woman bring anything but strength and peace and uplifting to all who come into her blessed presence? ~Mary Boardman Page, "The Confessions of a Worrier," 1899 [A little altered. And, I'm not so sure it can really be done so simply as "at will," but for the sake of the quote's power I'll not argue. —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]

Some of your hurts you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived,
But what torments of grief you endured
From the evil which never arrived.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I highly recommend worrying. It is much more effective than dieting. ~William Powell

Try not to worry, as it's sticky and hard to scrub off. ~Terri Guillemets

Anger and worry are the rankest forms of Egotism. ~Horace Fletcher, Menticulture, 1895

If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you. ~Calvin Coolidge

When one has too great a dread of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come. ~Joseph Joubert

Some men storm imaginary Alps all their lives, and die in the foothills cursing difficulties which do not exist. ~Edgar Watson Howe

Worry is a prayer for what you don't want. ~Cultivate Greatness Blog, August 2008

Worry is a prayer for chaos. ~Gabrielle Bernstein, Add More -ing To Your Life, 2011

Don't chain your worries to your body. The burden soon becomes heavy and your health will give too much of itself to pick up the extra load. ~Terri Guillemets

When I really worry about something, I don't just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don't go. I'm too worried to go. I don't want to interrupt my worrying to go. ~J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

[R]est thee now,
And may some kind God smooth thy wrinkled brow.
~William Morris, The Life and Death of Jason: A Poem, 1867

Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained. ~Arthur Somers Roche

We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies. ~Etty Hillesum

Worry is just curdled energy! ~Henie Reisinger

There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them. ~Josh Billings

Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is with thoughts of what may be. ~John Dryden

Even at times when I don't care, I know exactly what I would care about if I did. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due. ~William Ralph Inge

Worry bankrupts the spirit. ~Terri Guillemets

There are more things, Lucilius, that frighten us than injure us, and we suffer more in imagination than in reality. ~Seneca

We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us. ~John Lancaster Spalding

We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives. ~Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail, 1979

There is always sufficient reason for despair, but there is never sufficient purpose. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

Grief has limits, whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what we know has happened, but we fear all that possibly may happen. ~Pliny the Younger

It is clear that the physical and mental results of worry are bad, is it not? If you doubt it, go and ask any doctor how many people break down in a year from worry. Ask him too, how many nervous and functional diseases are directly the result of worrying. And then ask him if the assertion of Professor Elmer Gates is true, that if the exhaled breath of an unhappy or worried person be examined under a microscope, a grayish, poison precipitate is found deposited therein. ~Mary Boardman Page, "The Confessions of a Worrier," 1899 [a little altered —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]

Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night. ~Author Unknown

Do not be afraid of tomorrow; for God is already there. ~Author Unknown

Real difficulties can be overcome, it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable. ~Theodore N. Vail

No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. ~George MacDonald

Rule number one is, don't sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it's all small stuff. ~Robert Eliot

They need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won't be at peace unless they can latch on to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by them and they know it and that too worries them no end. ~Jack Kerouac

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears. ~Michel de Montaigne